


Scheming on a Thing, That's a Mirage

by mugglerock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Possibility for Dean’s Mindset, Angst, Break Up, Coda, Coda in the Sense it Doesn’t Really Fix Anything, Gen, Heart Break, Less than 1k of Agonizing Pain, M/M, Season 15 Episode 3 Coda, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Sort of Coda, Spoilers, Supernatural - Freeform, The Final Season, Unrequited Love, Winchester Level Sacrifice, you were warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 13:51:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21180491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugglerock/pseuds/mugglerock
Summary: “Something always goes wrong,” Cas said.Dean couldn’t stop himself. “Yeah, why does that something always seem to be you?”





	Scheming on a Thing, That's a Mirage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eyes_of_a_Tragedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyes_of_a_Tragedy/gifts).

> So, the lovely [Eyes_of_a_Tragedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyes_of_a_Tragedy/pseuds/Eyes_of_a_Tragedy) and I were chatting about the most recent episode. She had this really, really fun take on Dean’s possible mindset, one that… if it was canon, would be way more fucked up emotionally than anything these dumb boys have put themselves through over the past decade and a half.
> 
> So, my love, this is for you. I hope I was somewhere within range of the concept you had in mind. <3<3<3<3
> 
> P.S. Obviously unbeta’d because this is a gift for one beta, and the other hasn’t seen episode three yet. Any mistakes are my own (and I expect will be pointed out after the fact, t-rex).

** _I’m trying to tell you now, it’s sabotage_ **

There are some people that are consumed by a toxic trait, the kind of mindset that sacrificial acts are necessary, sometimes even deserved. Often times it doesn’t make sense, not that the mentality for that sort of justification ever does. The reasons vary. Sometimes there’s a goddamn apocalypse, and really fucked up choices have to be made. Sometimes it’s because you’re terrified, absolutely scared shitless, of what a certain connection could mean, could become. Sometimes it’s because you aren’t as stupid as you seem, as naive… that you _ know, _ deep down, what a connection like that means.

It means that a fucking deal with the Empty will ruin everything.

Dean knew about the bullshit deal Cas made. He overheard the guy when he thought he was being sneaky. Cas was always bad at that. Like the time he handed Dean a poorly wrapped birthday gift and told him what it was as he handed it to him. 

A shitty horseshoe shaped bottle opener from the OK Corral gift shop. Dean kept it on him at all times.

He’d be damned if he lost Cas to death again, or the angel equivalent of it. So when an opportunity presented itself, Dean took it and ran like he was being chased by a goddamn werepire. 

It wasn’t like Cas was actually to blame for his mother’s death. Jack was. While Dean had made peace with the fact that it hadn’t been intentional, not actively, the opportunity was a guarantee to prevent Dean from losing someone else he loved. Again.

Without thinking twice, Dean used the guilt Cas felt for his inadvertent part in Mom’s death to push Cas away. It was a line he had to straddle, between keeping Cas at arm’s length yet never out of reach. 

Dean couldn’t lose Cas permanently. He was willing to lose a lot, and they would. Missed opportunities, things, people, feelings… that he had wanted so desperately to experience differently than before. He had been building up the courage to take that leap, then the deal hung over their heads, an ugly smear on a future they were supposed to have.

That was gone. And Dean needed a reason to keep Cas safe.

_ “You’re dead to me.” _

That was where it began. It was extreme, and he had less control over the words than he cared to admit, but the unadulterated shock, the raw hurt on Cas’s face meant Dean had succeeded. And was an indelible image that he would never escape. 

The problem was, it got a little too easy to make those jabs at Cas’s expense, to use the anger he felt at the angel for fucking up their future by combining it with the grief of losing Mom. Again. Dean felt his soul darken with each glare, each shitty comment, each demand he made that went far outside Cas’s comfort zone.

And then Chuck had to come back and give Dean the perfect chance to make all of it stop. Dean was tired, more than tired, and with the Equalizer, maybe he could finally rest. Saving the world from Jack’s power was just a bonus.

Then the kid had to fucking pull a Cas move, more like the angel than was logical considering who his father was, by accepting his fate at Dean’s gun wielding hand. 

Dean knew in that moment he couldn’t do it, but Chuck could.

It all came in a blur then, Jack’s death, Chuck ending the friggin’ world by ripping a tear into Hell, a friggin’ ghostpocalypse. Hit after hit just kept coming, and Dean realized the rest he had banked on was never going to come. So he kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing. Himself, Sammy, Rowena, Belphegor…

Cas.

Taking it a step further. Punishment he forced upon Cas by making him accompany the demon to get Lilith’s crook, horn, whatever the fuck it was. Dean knew it was a dick move, but he needed to figure out how to keep this up. How to keep his balance on that godforsaken line.

And of course that went to shit too.

“Something always goes wrong,” Cas said.

Dean couldn’t stop himself. “Yeah, why does that something always seem to be you?”

He saw the exact moment he broke the angel’s heart. Dean swallowed down the bilous acid that burned his throat as he somehow kept his cool. Counting to ten in his head as Cas laid it all out, because if Dean looked up, he would crumble. He nodded when Cas said he didn’t care, that he blamed him for Mary. It was a helluva lot safer than the alternative.

Unfortunately, it also pushed Dean over that line. 

“I think it’s time for me to move on.”

Dean watched helplessly as Cas turned his back to him, a finality to it that, even when Cas died, hadn’t felt quite so real before. And he wouldn’t go after him. He _ couldn’t. _

That was Dean Winchester’s cross to bear, even with Chuck gone, still a puppet to the machinations of a fucking cosmic being, because Cas had been stupid enough to pull a Winchester and make a deal.

At least Cas was safe from the empty now.


End file.
